Vicki is a popular character. Everyone seems to want to adopt her. But she is very much her daddy’s girl. Except when it comes to school. Most kids would beg NOT to go to school. Vicki begs for the normality of GOING to school, and The Doctor relents.

One reason why I went through the elaborate storyline in which Vicki was aged from four to nine, was so that I could do things like this – Vicki going to school with Sukie. The idea of The Doctor doing the ultimate domestic, driving his children to school in a car – hover car, yes, but a CAR, struck me as something to explore. He IS still the Prince of the Universe. He IS president of Gallifrey. But he is also a father and he SHOULD do these things. Because he DIDN’T do it when Susan went to Coal Hill School, and that’s WHY he had problems with her teachers.

Jelly babies are unknown in 23^rd century London, of course, because the Daleks destroyed the factory. So Vicki has a handy way to break the ice with the other children with her bag of sweets.

Jimmy Forester, the red-haired bully who is going to die next year is a story that MIGHT come home to roost. I’m not sure. I have a vague idea at present of some kind of cross between Father’s Day and Final Destination where Jimmy has to die one way or another, but doing that with a CHILD isn’t something that will be easy.

Problems with Vicki’s teacher were not what The Doctor expected, but he gets them anyway. The sequence with the cars and the attempted kidnapping was tricky. The Doctor leaving the two kids locked in the car while he goes off chasing people never felt quite right. When the empty car blows up, the amount of jeopardy they are in is emphasised.

But that’s only round one of this story. The Doctor rescues the teacher and takes her home for tea, whereupon he discovers that she isn’t really called Lily Wright. The surname was taken from the only Human she ever met, Barbara, who she met when The Doctor, MANY centuries ago, visited her world.

Geoff and Martin get to ride again. Not for long, and they suffer the ultimate humiliation as CPOs – their car breaks down and they lose their protectees. But they get to be heroes again when Chris and Davie take them along to Lily’s planet to help out with the revolution while The Doctor rescues his wife from the would-be dictator.

As The Doctor says, he took the kids to school and still got to fight a despot. Can’t be bad.